Insights Unlocked

Amanda Renteria, the CEO of Code for America, joined the Human Insight Podcast to talk about using technology AND regularly talking with your audience to reimagine government to better serve communities. 

Amanda has worked in the financial sector, been a teacher in her hometown, and spent most of her career in the public sector, from serving as Chief of Operations at the California Department of Justice to being national political director for Hilary Clinton’s 2016 US presidential campaign. And, oh yeah, she ran for the U.S. Congress and for California’s state governor.

Among the topics discussed include: 



Amanda’s thoughts on Hispanic Heritage Month following her recent appointment by President Biden to his Commission on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics.

Kate Towsey is Research Operations Manager at Atlassian. In this episode, Kate challenges how we think about Research Ops, saying it’s not an administrative effort. It’s foundational in providing the necessary tools and training to make sure research can be democratized while maintaining the highest quality insights.

The digital acceleration is changing everyone’s lives, especially for designers who are more and more in demand across companies, industries and geographies. 

The past decade has seen incredible changes to design, and who is a designer.

In fact, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics this year officially recognized the job of “web and digital interface designer,” says Andrew Hogan, who leads insights and analysis at Figma and was this week’s guest on the Human Insight Podcast. 

“And there’s also this realization that design can impact things at a business level, call it Big D design,” Hogan said. “It’s not just about moving pixels, it’s also about solving business problems.”

Podcast co-hosts Andy MacMillan and Janelle Estes talked with Andrew before Adobe’s announced its intentions to acquire Figma for $20 billion.

In addition to discussing how much design has changed, as well as what’s ahead, they also discussed what are the best practices across the industry, especially as it pertains to big, global, and/or enterprise organizations.

Joaquín Márquez Correa is Global Head for UX and Design at Banco Santander, one of the largest banks in Spain. In this episode, Joaquin reminds us how prevalent financial services are in our day-to-day lives and how Santander is betting big on great user experience to better service their customers.

Kausamby Manjita joins the Human Insight podcast this week to discuss her work bringing the complex technologies that Walmart, Alibaba and Amazon use to the rest of the retail world.

Kaus is CEO and co-founder of Mason, an all-in-one platform that helps entrepreneurs automate their online stores.

Currently, she said, about 98 of every 100 people who land on any online store (that is not big tech) usually drop off before buying anything compared to the 15 of every 100 for a big retailer. She wants to help close that gap for entrepreneurs, especially when the cost of acquiring web traffic to your store is increasing.

Additionally, Kaus outlined the specific challenges these owners face, whether that was in sales and promotions, personalization, or data-driven merchandising.

She also discussed how she helps these vastly different online businesses connect with their audiences in a way that is authentic.

In this bonus episode celebrating International Podcast Day 2022, 12 past guests on the show share their tips and advice for convincing others to invest in customer feedback.

In order of appearance are: 

Pablo Sanchez Martin is Senior Vice President and Head of Design at Lightstream. In this episode, Pablo shares some compelling thoughts on how UX insights and data have the power to transform business. He advocates that business leaders need to lean into their research teams, giving them the space to ask hard questions and influence strategic directions.

"When you're thinking about measuring a community, usually what you measure is what you effect," said Wesley Faulkner, Senior Community Manager at Amazon’s AWS. "So, if you're not measuring the success of the people who are in the community, if that's not part of the measurements, then you're really not going to be tracking that. Thus, you may lose sight of what makes your community good."

Wesley talked with Andy MacMillan, UserTesting's CEO, and Janelle Estes, UserTesting's Chief Insights Officer, in this episode of the Human Insight Podcast. 

Wesley is a first-generation American, public speaker, and podcaster. He is a founding member of the government transparency group Open Austin and a staunch supporter of racial justice, workplace equity, and neurodiversity. His professional experience spans technology from AMD, Atlassian, and Dell among others. Wesley is currently .

He also co-hosts the developer relations focused podcast Community Pulse and serves on the board for SXSW.

He said measuring what makes a sponsored community successful can be complicated. Ask the sales team and they want to know how many leads are coming from the community. Ask customer service and they want to know how many tickets are being diverted to and answered in the community. 

"But if I had to boil it down to anything," Faulkner said, "it is what does the community itself say its worth?"

Listen to the episode to hear Faulkner's tips for putting metrics to that measurement. 

Additionally, they discuss: 

Episode web page: https://tinyurl.com/2p9rbkfu

Natalie Marie Dunbar is the former Senior Manager of UX Content Strategy at Walmart. This episode we talk with her about the growing discipline of integrated user experience content strategy. And how this budding discipline is starting to get a seat at the table along with design, research and product.

This week on the Human Insight Podcast, Karthik Suresh joins Andy and Janelle to discuss just what goes into making a successful product launch.

Suresh is co-founder and CPO/CTO of Ignition, a collaborative hub for product teams to plan, execute, and measure the GTM side of launching a product.

In their conversation, they discuss: